What Would the Dog Whisperer Do?

William Jasper Stone, the oversized bull terrier that shares our home, has some annoying habits that I would like him to drop. His greetings are exuberant, and his being 95 pounds of teeth and muscle makes them a little dangerous. I don’t mind it so much for myself, as I am usually ready for it, but visitors to our house are sometimes put off by what appears to be an immanent mauling. Jasper has no guile and is incapable of malice, so when he jumps up on me he means well. Nevertheless, when I am not braced for it, it can be painful, especially if there is inadvertent terrier head-human genital area contact.

“Damn your eyes, Jasper!” I cried out on the last such occasion.

“The Dog Whisperer would never say that,” Mrs Vache Folle pointed out.

Indeed, the Dog Whisperer would doubtless walk into our home and within seconds cure Jasper of jumping, door crashing, vacuum cleaner eating and his heedlessness in the face of distractions. Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer who appears on National Geographic TV, is like Nanny 911 for dog people. The worst dog in the world with seemingly intractable behavior problems is instantly turned into an obedient and loving companion. All he does, it seems, is acknowledge that the dogs are dogs and quietly assert his own alpha status. Dogs fairly quickly get the message that resistance is futile. Also, he instructs people to exercise their dogs. It is amazing how many people never walk their dogs. We have a huge fenced yard, and we still have to walk the dogs down the road or in the woods so they can check their “pee-mail” every day.

We decided to try the Dog Whisperer technique on Jasper’s obsession with the vacuum cleaner. If you turn on the vacuum, Jasper tries to kill it. The first time I ever vacuumed around him after we brought him home from the shelter, he grabbed the machine and ran off with it until the cord was yanked out of the outlet. Ever since then, we have had to lock him up or out when we want to vacuum. Sunday, Mrs VF wanted to vacuum some dog hair off of a sofa, so we decided to try thwarting Jasper and saying “No” whenever he made a move for the machine. Mrs VF tried this for about 90 seconds, Jasper persisted and seemed to think that this game was even better than the kill the vacuum game without resistance, and Mrs VF gave up. She just wanted to get the chore done and despaired of getting anywhere with the dog.

“The Dog Whisperer wouldn’t give up so easily,” I gently chastised.

When I regained consciousness, it dawned on me that most of the problems that Nanny 911 and the Dog Whisperer confront have their roots in parental and dog ownerly laziness and fatigue. A few minutes with Jasper now might pay off in years of dog-attack-free appliance use, but we are just too tired and busy to invest the time and effort especially if we take no pleasure in thwarting our charges.

UPDATE: Mrs VF used her day off productively and, to my astonishment, trained Jasper not to attack the vacuum. It appears that she reads this blog.